Court points murderer to proper grievance appeal process

ANCHORAGE — The state’s highest court has slammed shut one door, but pointed a Wasilla woman convicted of murder toward an open window with regards to redressing her grievances with the state prison system.

Suzette Welton, who has since legally changed her name to Doctor Suzette Welton, was convicted of murder in 2002 after prosecutors say she took out life insurance policies on her two sons then drugged them with sleeping pills, spread gasoline around the upper story of their Mulchatna Drive home and set it afire. One son died in the blaze. The other escaped.

In a ruling handed down Friday, the Alaska Supreme Court dealt with a handful of grievances Welton has with the state Department of Corrections.

• Grievance filed September 2011: The department wouldn’t let her use a CD-ROM on a prison computer. She needed the CD to work on a correspondence course.

• Grievance filed November 2011: After changing her name in 2008, the department failed to change all of her documentation and communication with her to reflect the new name.

• Grievance filed in December 2011: Welton bought communion bread from an external vendor, but the prison wouldn’t let her have it.

In each of these cases, after officials at Hiland Mountain Correctional Center — the state women’s prison in Eagle River — denied Welton’s grievance, she filed an appeal to the state Superior Court.

That court, in due course, rejected each of her appeals, saying that the grievance process didn’t create enough of a record on which to appeal. In legal terms, the process wasn’t “adjudicative.”

“There was no hearing or similar proceeding at which parties could ‘present and rebut evidence and argument,’” Supreme Court Justice Joel Bolger writes, quoting a prior court ruling. “Neither party had the opportunity to examine witnesses and the grievance process did not involve ‘formulation of issues of law and fact.’”

In short, there’s nothing on which a higher court can base its decision as to who was right and who was wrong.

Welton appealed the Superior Court decision to the Alaska Supreme Court.

That higher court, in the decision Justice Bolger wrote in the decision, sided with the Superior Court and denied the appeal.

But, Bolger wrote, that doesn’t mean that Welton can’t appeal the rulings of the prison.

It just means she needs to take another route, one that will create a record with testimony and documents.

“We do not intend this ruling to foreclose Welton from pursuing her claims. We assume that she may file an independent civil action requesting the same relieve she requests in this case,” Bolger writes.

Here’s the open window Bolger points to — i.e. that Welton can sue the state prison system.

“In a civil action, both parties will have the right to a full and fair hearing on these claims,” Bolger writes.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.